Lesson 5: Star Wars: The Godfather of Archetype Films
Lucas' storyline is right out of the Campbell playbook for successful tales. We'll look at only one element of the hero myth here: The idea of the "adopted hero." Then we'll leave Campbell-land and look at evil political regimes and some Father/Son relationships in the movie and in the Bible.
Little Orphan Luke: The Adopted Hero
Lucas read Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces before he undertook the final rewrite of Star Wars; at least that’s how the story goes. Indeed, the Star Wars trilogy (and, debatably, the ongoing epic of the Star Wars films) uses many archetypes and mythological themes.
This lesson will not attempt to be a comprehensive analysis of the film. It will nearly give a taste in the hopes that the students will branch off and go on a few hero’s adventures for themselves in search of more themes. You can start with the web site Star Wars Origins, which has a tremendous amount of Campbell material. http://www.jitterbug.com/origins/myth.ht...
As part of the promised “taste,” let’s start with parallels in Luke and Jesus’ childhood.
A common theme in hero stories is the idea of a childhood spent in obscurity (“an infant exile and return,” in the words of Campbell). The prince and princess, the hero with miraculous powers, and protagonist of many a story spend their childhood unknown to the outside world, and often unaware of their own heritage. (Campbell, 318 – 334)
Moses, of course, is an excellent example of this. In Exodus 2, Moses’ Hebrew mother sends the infant Moses down the river in a basket in order to save his life. Moses is taken from the river by the daughter of the Pharaoh and raised as an Egyptian prince.
Unbeknownst to him and most of the Egyptians, he is the same race as the Egyptian Hebrew slaves. When he finally makes this discovery, he exiles himself into another country to try and live out the life of a shepherd. God calls him back to fulfill his destiny: Lead the people of Israel out of oppression.
Think also of Cinderella. Or Oliver Twist (or just about all the Dickens’ stories, where the protagonist doesn’t discover his parental heritage – and the wealth it brings – until the final chapters).
In our own time, we have Little Orphan Annie and, even more contemporary, The Princess Diaries and Harry Potter which tell the same story. In fact, the idea that we are in the “wrong family” and must have been switched at birth (preferably with a royal family or a family with special powers) is a childhood fantasy shared by most of us.
And so the story of Luke Skywalker strikes a chord with all boys who, like Luke, dream of being shown magic powers they didn’t know they had, of traveling the stars, and of having great adventures.
As infants, Luke and his twin sister Leia were hidden away on opposite ends of the universe. The two are hidden in order to protect them from Darth Vader ("Dark Father") and the evil Emporer who know that the children of Skywalker will be powerful in the ways of The Force. Luke is placed on the planet of Tatooine with a dull, rural, desert lifestyle where representatives of the Dark Side will have a hard time finding him (even if it is Anakin Skywalker’s birthplace). As well, Luke himself will be hard pressed to ever discover his own destiny in such a place.
The infant Jesus is in the same predicament in Mt: 2. An angel tells Joseph in a dream that the family must flee to Egypt in order to hide the baby from Herod. Herod is searching for the baby for the same reasons that Darth Vader and the Emperor are interested in the Skywalkers: He is afraid of the baby and its power.
Even when Herod dies, Joseph is afraid to return to Israel. He is again told in a dream to go to the district of Galilee (Mt 2:22). There, like Luke, the holy family leads a quiet life in a small fishing town. Jesus lives in such obscurity there that we do not hear about him again until he is thirty years old.
Note that although Luke is excited when he learns his heritage at first, he doesn’t respond to his call immediately. He has to help his uncle with the harvest, he responds to Obi-Wan after the message from Leia.
Again, we have the case of the reluctant hero when Luke first refuses the call of destiny. Campbell writes, “The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one’s own interest.” (60)
We are not given any information about how Jesus responded to his “call” at the age of thirty, but he, too, must have struggled with his vocation. Certainly his life up until them must have been much like Frodo’s and Luke’s: a quiet life spent working and playing among family and friends he had known since childhood. The politics of the bigger cities – Jerusalem, Minas Tirith, the Death Star – are far from these hero’s homes and their minds. Suddenly, they find themselves thrust into vocations that demand that they deal with many more types of people than they are used to, some of whom want to see them dead.
Imagine one day you find yourself drinking wine or beer at a friend’s wedding or birthday, and the next day you find yourself directly responsible not only for the lives of the people you love but for the future of the entire world.
No wonder Jesus went into the desert for forty days before he undertook his mission.
Star Wars by J. Campbell
In considering Luke and his vocation, look at these Campbell readings. In some cases, it appears that Lucas had Campbell write some of the plot:
Luke as warrior whose destiny it is to overthrow a tyrant: (Campbell 334 – 341) : “…Tyrants of the human breed, usurping for themselves the goods of their neighbors, arise, and are the cause of widespread misery. They have to be suppressed. The elementary deeds of the hero are those of clearing the field.”
Luke and The Force. (Campbell 97 – 109) “…It may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage.”
Luke and his dear old dad, Darth (Campbell 108) “Then he finds that he and his opposite are not of differing species but one flesh.” (Think of this line in terms of Neo and Agent Smith as well.)
